Amélie Beaudet

I have been a member of the Sterkfontein research team since 2017. As part of my postdoctoral research, I virtually reconstructed and studied previously unknown structures of the “Little Foot”’s skeleton (brain, inner ear, first cervical vertebra), described new hominin specimens from Milner Hall, and revised emblematic specimens from Member 4 and the Jacovec Cavern. In 2019, I was part of the team who scanned the “Little Foot”’s skull at the synchrotron facility of the Diamond Light Source in UK. 

In 2012-2015, I did my PhD on southern African fossil monkeys, including specimens from Sterkfontein. I had the chance to meet some members of the team during my visits in South Africa and I finally joined them in 2017 when I started my postdoctoral research at the University of the Witwatersrand with Dominic Stratford acting as my host. The degree of preservation of the fossil specimens (“Little Foot” is >90% complete) and number of fossil remains (over one thousand hominins) struck me. Scanning “Little Foot”’s skull using synchrotron radiation has been the most exciting project I could develop as a member of team, as we did not know what to expect before seeing the first images and the results went beyond our expectations.

The “Cradle of Humankind”, and South Africa as a whole, holds the key to understanding human origins. The hominin-bearing sites have yielded incredible fossil hominin assemblages, prominent among them is the Australopithecus and Paranthropus record. Studying variation within Australopithecus can tell us a lot about fossil hominin diversity and how the species emerged and perhaps coexisted. Paranthropus and Homo were coeval, but Homo survived and evolved while Paranthropus went extinct. As such the Paranthropus specimens are particularly helpful for identifying adaptations specific to Homo that may have played a role in their evolutionary success. 

I use imaging techniques to study fossil specimens. This part of my work is particularly exciting as I am able to unveil hidden aspects of iconic specimens such as “Mrs Ples” or “Little Foot”. 

Geochronologists develop the chronological framework in which evolutionary changes identified in the fossil record could be interpreted. Without dates, our interpretations of evolutionary trends within our lineage, the emergence of key biological and behavioural adaptations, or appearance of new species, would be partial. As an example, the substantial amount of morphological variation within the Australopithecus assemblage of Sterkfontein could be interpreted differently if the specimens are proved to be contemporaneous (i.e., diversity) or to come from different periods of time (i.e., ancestor-descendant within the same lineage).

When I learnt about Mary Anning as a child, I was impressed by her work. She discovered many Jurassic marine fossils and played a major role in the birth of the field of paleontology.

Sterkfontein yielded the most complete Australopithecus skeleton. “Little Foot” is even more complete than “Lucy”.